Using humor in therapy?

T and I both use sarcasm and humor, we laugh a bunch. I can carry it too far sometimes and it turns into a defense mechanism.

T and I use some humor but not too often. Like there are times where I will say something and she will giggle, but it actually wasn't meant to be funny at all or vice versa..but then other times we can laugh a lot and it will all be okay.

One of the many T's I saw and didn't stay with refused to laugh at funny things I said, and absolutely refused to use humor in any way. His refusal to laugh bothered me so much that I completely lost focus on my issues and focused on making him laugh. When he finally burst out laughing, I was like, GOTCHA. He immediately stopped laughing, and said, "Oh crap." THEN I started laughing, but he was really kind of pissed. The rest of the session did not go well and I never went back.

My first T ever used very gentle humor with me and it helped me relax and trust that he wasn't going to hurt me. My current T is funny in a kinda dorky way and he laughs very unselfconsciously at me when I'm being funny. He recognizes, however, that I am particularly funny when I'm uncomfortable or stressed, and will stop laughing and actually address the serious undertone to what I'm joking about. For me, therapy would be basically impossible without some humor.

I've got a pretty good sense of humour and often laugh at the heavy side of life, although at my own expense, not at others. I've seen three ts and each of them had a good sense of humour too although I'd say my former (second) t was probably the best matched in that regard. She had almost exactly the same intellectual style as me so she really 'got' my humour. At the end of our work together she told me that my 'wicked' style of humour had really warmed her heart. My current T clearly has a sense of humour but she is gentler and quieter than my former T and so humour doesn't play as big a role in my sessions with her. Instead I've been working on a new way of connecting which is just as important just different.

T2 loves to use humor of varying types ...... sometimes it was gentle, sometimes teasing, sometimes more pointed/sarcastic. She said humor is a big part of her personality anyway in RL, that she often cracks jokes or is sarcastic (she even admitted that sometimes her friends think she carries it too far sometimes, but she never did in session). I loved it, because her style of humor, sarcastic/intellectual, matched mine; sometimes we sort of verbally sparred and it was fun.
She thinks humor is an important element of therapy, because it can be one way of presenting harder things in a context easier to accept or understand, because it's as good/healing/helpful to laugh as it to cry, and because she feels like there needs to be some element of fun/lightness in therapy at times rather than it always being hard/intense......
I think humor in therapy is a good thing, used well, just like it's a good thing in life ...... I never felt like T's humor was a fake thing or a 'tool', not just a part of her therapeutic persona, but a real part of her that she used/shared in a therapeutic sense....

My T uses humor, but I think one would have to have a sense of humor to use it. I figure so what if it's a tool/technique she uses? It's just like everything else that she does in session, and it doesn't make anything less genuine because of the situation.

My T can ALWAYS make me laugh, and I really appreciate it. Even in the one session where I talked about the experience I had with date r*** (never talked about before and never since) and was avoiding eye contact, shaking, and crying, she still managed to get a grin out of me with one of her comments. I think that's amazing! I didn't even feel like she wasn't taking me seriously or anything like that, because she definitely was, but she has great people skills I guess.